My daily walks continue. During the last several weeks I’ve been waking up earlier than I usually do around six so that I can have a lead beating the heat. I am not a morning person I literally have to push myself out of bed and dress with my eyes close. You might be thinking that since I go to the flea markets I must be a morning person. Yeah no. The flea markets are once a week that I can do especially since I don’t have to leave here until seven. There is an ocean of difference between 6 AM and 7 AM. Certainly, there are more hours between those two numbers.
Walking the Provençal hillside is very different than walking around the rice fields in the Sacramento Valley. The landscape, the earth’s texture under my feet, the scent of the surrounding, also the energy circling around me propelling me onward. Mostly the Sacramento valley is not an upward curvaceous challenge as the hillside around my town. When I arrived here I thought I was a decent walker pumping out six miles in an hour and a half… though I learned quickly when I came back home to France that the French pump out miles in their sleep they pass me by speeding up the hills like hungry wild goats. I am not ready for Saint Jean de Compostelle I have more, a lot more muscles to develop.
Meanwhile, I continued walking up to Saint Claire above our village and return home taking the trail on the other side of the hill. This morning as two walkers passed me by as if I was tied to a boulder their dog walked alongside me, you know I am slowly getting over my fear of dogs, its eyes were gentle and I swear I heard it say, “Come along you are doing fine.”
Every day whether I like it or not I will walk. Whether it is too hot, too cold, too windy, or raining. It doesn't matter if I walk to slow, or too fast, or get up early or not. What matters is that I do it in faith, is a symbolic gesture for my brother, to be with him in spirit, to use my walking as a prayer, to believe that my energy is helping him, that I am with him in spirit and I am in every step believing that every step I take may be one easier step in his journey with cancer.
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